


What Is Love

by toyhto



Category: Black Sails
Genre: M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-08
Updated: 2018-12-08
Packaged: 2019-09-14 11:16:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16911879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toyhto/pseuds/toyhto
Summary: For years now I’ve loved a dead man.





	What Is Love

What is love, you say.  
  
_What is love_ , in your patient voice, as if nothing can make you bitter, as if nothing can turn your gentleness into sharp words, as if the years that changed me haven’t changed you a bit. _What is love,_ as if you’re waiting for me to answer.  
  
I laugh.  
  
You smile and it turns laugh into a cough in my mouth.  
  
Fucking hell, Thomas.  
  
What is love?  
  
I don’t know. I thought it was something like this: I’d make sure I’d finish the things you started, I’d fight until in the end they’d get me, too, like they got you. Or, perhaps: I’d fight until in the end it’d get me.  
  
Live by the sword, so they say. I can’t swear that wasn’t what I was trying to do. But you have to understand. I thought you were dead. I really thought so.  
  
For years now I’ve loved a dead man. And you stayed the same over the years, you stayed the way you were in your bedroom in London in those mornings filled with white light. Don’t laugh at me. Don’t say it wasn’t like that. And now, now you aren’t dead anymore and you’re still the same, you’re still fucking telling me that everything’s going to be alright, every goddamn thing I messed up for you. _Me._ That I’m going to be alright. As if you can fix me.  
  
Don’t you see? I thought I’d never have to face you again and I let myself become someone else.  
  
Don’t touch me.  
  
_God,_ I’ve missed you.  
  
Don’t be so nice to me.  
  
Can you just… can you just touch me?  
  
Anything. I don’t mind.  
  
You can’t just forgive me like that. It makes me think you don’t see me. You can’t just imagine that I’m not this… that I didn’t become… that I’m the same man than I was in your bed a lifetime ago.  
  
Don’t kiss me.  
  
_God_ , don’t kiss me like that.  
  
You know what I think? I think I don’t know a fucking thing about love, Thomas, only that I can’t help but love you, I can’t stop loving you, it’s the only thing that has made sense to me. The only thing. And when I looked in the mirror, and don’t laugh, when I sometimes saw myself in the mirror and blinked and wondered who the hell that man was, then I thought that at least I still loved you. At least I still had that. At least that had survived from the man you knew in London.  
  
Just kiss me. Don’t talk, kiss me. Don’t tell me it’s alright, that it’s going to be different but we’re going to figure it out. Don’t tell me you still love me. I can’t hear it now, Thomas, please just kiss me. I can’t believe it’s been so long. I can’t believe I lost you. I can’t believe I let them tell me you were dead and didn’t think to find you, didn’t think it was possible…  
  
I should’ve. You would’ve, if it had been me and not you.  
  
I couldn’t bear to _hope._ I know what hope can do to people.  
  
Don’t you fucking tell me I’m crying, Thomas, don’t you dare. I don’t remember when I last cried, just let me… and don’t be so _nice_ to me, I can’t take it. You shouldn’t. You should, I don’t know, you should ask me what I’ve done.  
  
I can’t tell you.  
  
I love you anyway. You know that, don’t you? You have to know. I don’t care about anything else but you _have to know._  
  
I’m going to stop crying. In a second.  
  
Can’t we just, I don’t know, lie here, just like this? I thought I had lost you. I thought I had lost myself.  
  
What is love, you say.  
  
I don’t know.  
  
Just let me be here.

**Author's Note:**

> _What is love, baby don't hurt me..._
> 
> Sorry.


End file.
